Monthly Archives: December 2010

Hanako to Guuwa no Tera is a fantastic manga about a man named Asou Daisuke who is nicknamed the Folklore Detective. Asou has his own detective Agency, and he works alongside his partner Hanako.

The story focuses heavily on things called allegories. Allegories I guess can be defined as things that are only real if you believe in them. Each chapter usually focuses on it’s own allegory, but there were a few cases that spilt over into multi-chapter format.

Definitely my favorite character is Hanako. There are many reasons, so I guess I should list them here. She is a loli, she has awesome Rika-like hair, her eyebrows are killer, she’s a super tech, and she has a giant part in the story that I was able to really enjoy.

The manga is a great mix of action and drama and it’s a great deal of fun to read. Stuff like this is my favorite. I like stories that are scary, but not so scary that I’ll have crazy nightmares. I enjoyed the fresh storyline and the focus on allegories, mostly because I’d never heard the word allegory until I started reading this manga; I’ll always associate the two together from now on. I also like learning about Japanese scary stories, such as the Mary doll story or the “red paper, blue paper” story.

My one and only complaint about this manga is the fact that(*spoilers*) after the first few chapters, nothing more is mentioned about Asou’s belief that if he has 100 consecutive hiccups he will die. From the moment I read the overview, I was expecting at least one extremely high tension moment where he reaches up to 99 hiccups, but it just didn’t happen.

My Rating: 10/10

If you haven’t read this yet, then go and get to it. It’s only 18 chapters, and it’s not something to be missed. Nice art, fresh storyline, loveable characters, and cool settings make this an awesome manga for me.

So this is my new creation. Rotoscoped a scene from The Wire. Bodie and Poot kill their boy Wallace for snitching.

Took me way longer than I expected it to.. But I sort of burned out on it too. It’s 150 frames (I did 147, then recycled the last 3 over). I can’t seem to find the source on Youtube, so I guess I won’t post that.. But the scene is from season 1, ep 12. It’s actually a pretty long scene, and there’s a lot of back and forth between Bodie and Wallace. I cut most of that out though, just to shorten it (plus portraying them as talking is pretty difficult).. Originally I wanted to do a scene with Omar, but there’s a lot of angle changing in most of the shoot out scenes (plus they’re dark), so it’d be hard to do in a purely black line format.. I’m satisfied with this though, I like how it turned out.

Well I told lots of people that I was going to re-do Exiled-Destiny’s subs of Chobits. Well I am still doing them, but the first episode is done. And I would like you, the people of our blog, to tell me how I did. To watch the Episode that I did CLICK HERE.

If you would like to compare, download this torrent and make sure that you only download episode 1 unless you want to download them all and insert my subs later. i will probably not make a batch of my episodes til later. but i will create a zip with all the subtitles in it. anyway enjoy.

>Well I seen that everyone else has given their Top !0 Anime of 2010, so I guess now it is MY turn right? I decided to do this at 10:53 PM on December 24th. Waiting up for Santa y’all. Though he has already came for me. Got a Scott Pilgrim vs. The World Blu-ray pack. It was such a nice gift that I soooooo didn’t pick out myself. So, I guess you guys don’t care about this upper part. I guess i will just get right to it then.

And the winner is…

KATANAGATARI

This was an Awesome show. It kept me entertained til the very end. It made me laugh. It made me cry. It made me mad. It made me happy. This show did it all for me this year. It was only shown once a month and I could hardly wait for it. Not only did it have some good animation to it, it also what I would have to consider one of the best soundtracks. It made epic moments seem epic and it made sad moments seem sad. Of course, I’m always a sucker for loli type characters.So of course I fell for Togame. And so, as per Togame’s wish, “CHEERIO!!!”

Honorable Mentions:

Hime Chen! Otogi Chikku Idol Lilpri

A change of pace is nice once in a while right? Well that’s exactly what this show is to me. It is still on-going right now, so I know there are some fun times ahead. But seriously, the songs are addicting and never leave my head. I catch my self humming to, or singing out loud, the songs that are on here. It is a good thing to watch. So watch it.

KissXSis

Well… if you can’t guess why I liked this one, then you don’t deserve to watch anime. This had some good animation, (some of which could only be seen on the Blu-ray editions. This is a good anime with a strong ero that doesn’t take it into hentai. Though some people would disagree, I thought that it had a good plot with Keita trying to get into school and his “sisters” helping him along the way.

Ichiban Ushiro no Daimou

I haven’t finished this one yet, but I will next week and I found this one really good also. I think that it has a pretty good plot to it and the characters are memorable. I also really liked the soundtrack to this one. OP and ED music to an anime are really important to me Sometimes it will even be a deal breaker for me. And I enjoyed the OP to this anime very much.

Naruto (Pain Arc)

Whatever. Give me crap if you want, but I am and probably always will be a narutard. I really enjoy this anime very much. But the Pain Arc came and I was super excited. The soundtrack for this arc was awesome. The animation was also awesome, (except episode 167, I hated how they did that.) They did all the right things for this arc (almost) and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Worst Anime:

And the Golden Mullet goes to…..

Angel Beats

I seriously could not get into this show at all. It was boring as hell and I can’t believe I actually finished it. The music sucked and it did not pique my interest in the least. The only thing this show had that was anywhere near good was the OP, albeit only the first 10-15 seconds of it, but it was good nonetheless.

So did I make you angry with the last one??? GET OVER IT! Crap is crap no matter how much you shine it. So I hope you enjoyed my list. I also had many others as top contenders, but other members have already posted them so I will not re-post them here. Anyway, enjoy your Christmas as it is Christmas over here right now. Bye-nii!!

So, out of these titles I’ve chosen my top pick for 2010. It wasn’t a very hard pick, and I’m actually having more trouble deciding on some runner-ups xD.

The Winner is –

The Tatami Galaxy(Youjohan Shinwa Taikei)

Without a doubt, I thoroughly enjoyed Tatami Galaxy more than any other show. It honestly transcends its existence as a late night anime in Japan. It’s not just another show, one which happened to avoid tired tropes and old cliches, no, it’s solid entertainment, and true art.

The style is way unconventional, hardly resembling the expected “anime” visual. And that may have turned many people off. However, I loved that aspect about the show. But it’s not just the visual style’s “difference” that made me choose Tatami Galaxy. It’s just an all-around good watch, with an excellent and fulfilling conclusion. It uses the old narrative of reliving your life/specific times indefinitely, but it approaches it in a new and inventive way. It’s really intelligent and the whole series sets out to make a statement, which is pretty much unheard of these days.

Some people couldn’t get into the visuals, others thought the heavy dialogue was too hard to navigate. I’m not a writer, I’m not a critic or reviewer, it’s been 5 months since I watched the series. But I got so much enjoyment out of it, I definitely recommend it to everyone, and without hesitation rank it as the best title of 2010. (eh, I’m just a Yuasa fanboy m(_ _)m)

Now time to post some Runner Ups:

Shoka

For a singular half-hour OVA, there isn’t much there to judge it by. But the 30 minutes that are there are pretty sick. The story isn’t anything to talk about, but thats okay cause this OVA was all about the visual style. The animation all has this overly-sketchy, grotesque roughness to it. It’s really awesome. It was kinda like Windy Tales or Kemonozume, only more rough. Which I think is awesome, because those are some of my favorite titles for their visuals. So yeah, even though the story is sub-par, it’s only 30 minutes so what more do you expect? Plus it’s a period piece, so the setting is cool. All in all a quick, easy and entertaining watch.

Angel Beats

Guess I’ll throw this one in as a runner up. It was sweet, much better than I was expecting it to be. It was really crafted as an emotional roller-coaster, which I’m not so sure I liked. It seemed like one minute I was supposed to be laughing, but then the next I was supposed to feel sad for a character, so I ended up just not really doing anything either way. Now, thats not to say I didn’t laugh at all, oh I definitely found parts funny, and I definitely found parts dramatic or felt for the characters. But overall it took some getting used to and caught me off guard. I spent more time thinking “is this a set up to a joke for me to laugh at, or is it building a dramatic scene?” rather than me being in-the-moment of the show. Also, Tachibana is the biggest moeblob I’ve seen lately, which was awesome. I had forgotten how awesome moeblobs are.

Sora no Woto was good, Welcome to the Space Show was good, Ladies vs Butlers was good, Time of Eve movie was good but it was basically just the ONA. Not much else was really that noteworthy. The Studio 4C stuff, Honey Tokyo and Attraction, were both interesting, but not the studios best work.

Worst title –

Sleeping with Hinako

Was that that big of a surprise? I’m not sure why I watched this, but I did. 40 minutes of a chick occasionally rolling over while she sleeps in her bed. No one, ever, watch this. I don’t care how into fanservice you are, it’;s not worth it. Just go watch a hentai or something, seriously. It’s not even worth watching ironically with friends or anything. I mean, maybe the first like 4-5 minutes would be funny, but definitely not the whole thing.

Omamori Himari

I didn’t think this was that bad for the first couple of episodes. But by like the 3rd or 4th I couldn’t stand watching it. But I kept on watching, I don’t know why. I don’t know why I expected anything different to happen in the series after what I had seen in the first 3 or 4 episodes, but for some reason I thought “maybe it’ll get better,” but it only got worse. Even as far as harems go, there are many better titles than this. And definitely don’t bother if you’re in it for the fanservice, because that’s pretty minimal here.

(yay, no Shaft in the worst list orz)

There are still a ton of titles I’m looking forward to from 2010 though. Here’s a quick list of what else I wanna watch: